Sci-Fi Characters
Sci-Fi Characters
Jameih I'Kta
(Submitted by Jens Reineking j_reineking@gmx.de)
Clichés:
Uplifted Gorilla (4)
Gentleman Mobster (3)
Amateur Actor (3)
Voice Manipulist [1]
Hook: Extremely passionate about his appearance - as well in daily life as on stage. This can get extreme reactions from him if he perceives an insult. And, as with most fresh uplifted species, this kind of stress enforces the animal side.
Tale: His tribe is the first experiment in magical uplifting. Because he didn't like the magical research facility, he struck a deal with the organized crime and they got him out. His physique and his voice made him soon a valued member of the 'family'. Trying to blend in, he invested heavily in clothing and social activities, especially acting.
He's arrived in Atamar with the mission to check out the possibilty of bringing organized crime to Atamar. So far, he's enjoying himself immensely – Atamarians simply don't care that he's a four hundred pound gorilla.
Notes: Uplifting (see David Brin) means giving a species a boost and making it intelligent. So he can speak, think, and go the forward leaning walk of a great ape.
Voice Manipulist would be something like the ability of the Bene Gesserit (Frank Herbert/Dune) - can manipulate, influence and command other beings.
Vini "Vinnie" Proboscidum (Orion's Arm OC)
Ys's Shadiest Kind Detective (4)
Superspy Who Doesn't Often Kill Like Bond (3)
Mantis Shrimp/Human/Cyborg Hybrid (2)
Agnostic Who Brings Others Down (2)
Borderline Black Market Neural Interface (DNI) Engineer (1)
Hook: His rules, his contacts. Vinnie is all about forging his own path and looking cool to clients, even if he has to beg others to help him do it. There is a...variety of weird people he's met who can show up to demand favors from him.
Tale: Vini (pronounced Viney) Proboscidum has had a really strange life, to say the least. For one, mantis shrimps don't have proboscises.
More seriously, he is a citizen of the Zoeific Biopolity, a Sephirotic Empire that has been dedicated to bridging the gap between green politics, religion, and industry for thousands of years. Many believe that the Sephirotics' place in the universe is determined by the Great Hexidecimal, a mystical system of statehood roles believed to be derived from pop Kabbalah movements. Others believe that its place is determined by indigenous spiritual and religious movements instead.
Vinnie (pronounced how you think) has never cared about any of this, other than a vague desire to see his watery home, The Ocean of Ys, and the other planets of the galaxy prosper. Kind of like how a gangster from Information Age Earth wears a cross necklace. Revealing too much already, huh?
His "grandpa" was an entirely new type of rianth, a hybrid clade whose genetics are made up of the DNA or other traits of at least two different animal species. The creator of the Proboscidum family wanted them to be an asexual, one family clade who reproduced through vats and had mechanical, mouthless faces and DNIs for cool points. A clade that can be called rianth and also cyborg, reallycoolmovingon. They would be vecs according to some because of their artificial creation method, but who cares about that? Grandpa chose the name Proboscidum because of a joke about a Cantonese language name for the mantis shrimp ("urinating shrimp") and that mental image being like an elephant shooting out water from a trunk. The surname has gotten him made fun of with hundreds of different jokes, but Vinnie doesn't care. Being the third generation of one of the strangest families in the Terragen Sphere has more than numbed him to such insults, even before his line of work.
He's joined a paramilitary movement, moved from roving submarine habitats to cities above the water to meditative trances where he enters digital nations, and stopped eugenics extremists. Mostly, he works as a PI and a spy, mostly for private citizens, but governments on Ys are eligible too if they're friendly-like. Not too bad guys and good guys are all welcome to give him a call if they need a job done.